The Overland Trail stretches from Atchison, Kansas to Fort Bridger, Wyoming, and if you plan on making the journey, Mark Twain has a tip for you: “Nothing helps scenery like ham and eggs.” The American author described the pleasures of eating ham and eggs and smoking “an old rank delicious pipe” in his book Roughing It, a personal narrative of his adventures out west. Twain travelled along portions of the Overland Trail himself on a visit to his brother who was appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory. His stagecoach ride from St. Joseph, Missouri to Carson City, Nevada cost $150.

However, Twain was just one of many travellers on the Overland Trail, which shadowed the previously established Cherokee Trail. Miners, fur traders, settlers, and Indians once roamed across this “superhighway” of the plains. You can stand on the spot where the stagecoach passengers stopped at sod buildings for meals of buffalo, antelope, biscuits, coffee, and dried apple pie, then walk along the trial and imagine the wagon drivers who struggled to endure the endless sand, insects, and heat of the treeless river bottom. Upon arriving in Julesburg, Colorado, a mere 50 miles from here, Mark Twain wrote, “It did seem strange enough to see a town again after what appeared to us such a long acquaintance with deep, still, almost lifeless and houseless solitude!” Though it was lengthy, thousands of people and hundreds of wagons traversed the Overland Trail on an average day, widening the road to 7.5 feet in places.

Much of the trail was susceptible to attacks by Native American tribes due to turbulent relationships among Indians and pioneers, and in 1865 a cavalry at the Overland Trail Valley Station fortified its walls with sacks of corn to defend against members of an encroaching tribe. You can visit the stagecoach and telegraph station by travelling just 3.7 miles northeast of the Overland Trail Museum on Riverview Road.